curated by Suzanne Kim
Theresa Bloise, Tracey Goodman, Virginia Poundstone,
Devin Powers, Svetlana Rabey, Jason Rosenberg, Michael Schall,
Suzanne Song
Artists’ Reception: Saturday,
June 9, 5-8pm
Exhibition Dates: June 9 – July 22,
2007
Smack Mellon's summer exhibition is curated by an emerging curator
and includes artists selected from Smack Mellon’s Emerging
Artists Exhibition Program—an annual open call to emerging
artists. This year, emerging curator and Smack Mellon’s
Director of Exhibitions, Suzanne Kim, has selected eight exciting
emerging artists to present their work. These diverse works collectively
re-examine and represent existing and imaginary spaces.
Far from being a "white cube", Smack
Mellon's architecture provides a unique point of departure for
artists making site-specific installations. Svetlana
Rabey’s work functions as architectural shadows,
reacting to the shape and dimensions, color, texture and scale
of the space it inhabits. Focusing on a section of the gallery’s
concrete coal trough for her most recent wool-felt installation,
she flattens its volume to create a shadow of the massive form.
This shape then divides and multiplies, expanding systematically.
Tracey Goodman's slim suspended
lines similarly direct our focus to the concrete trough that
dominates above. As she creates a faulty path for an imaginary
electrical source with her delicate cast plaster conduits, quad
outlets and junction boxes, Goodman contradicts the efficient
and logical paths of the building’s modern electrical system
and its obsolete function as a "Boiler Building".
This thread of obsolescence resurfaces in Michael
Schall’s imagined world of pipes, rocks, cables,
scaffolding and cliffs in various phases of development and
decay. His large and intricate works on paper celebrate both
the grandeur and futility of human construction.
While examining the economic concept of "creative
destruction" and the erasure of the natural landscape, Virginia
Poundstone arranges materials in settings that challenge
our perception of the familiar. Made of thinly veiled common
building and decorative materials, her distorted landscapes describe
certain habitual ways we use our land.
Through real and fictive geometric forms, Devin
Powers explores the space outside our everyday experience.
Depicting the n-dimension through linking hypercubes-- a two
dimensional representation of a four dimensional cube—he
visually introduces dimensions realized only mathematically.
Applying a trompe l'oeil technique, two-dimensional
patterns become three-dimensional spaces within Suzanne
Song’s picture plane. After initial perception,
the dimensional shifts go beyond optical illusion; the figure/ground
relationships of the interwoven spaces become increasingly more
complex configurations.
Influenced by architecture, Theresa Bloise explores
the overwhelming landscape of the city. Dazzling night-time patterns
in high-rise buildings and the effects of neon signs that artificially
illuminate and obscure become fractured planes of pattern that
hover between abstraction and symbols of space.
Collected common materials such as paper, envelopes
and wrappers are poetically rearranged into small-scale collages
by Jason Rosenberg. While influenced by design,
the work is antithetical to a seamless product. The collages
are held together only by tape—leaving the narrative in
a state of impermanence.
Smack Mellon’s Emerging Artists summer exhibition
presents dynamic new work by these yet to be discovered artists.
This exhibition exemplifies the power of our mission to encourage
artistic exploration and foster the careers of young and under-represented
artists.
This exhibition is made possible with public funds
from the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and
the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and with
generous support from Smack Mellon’s Members, The Greenwall
Foundation, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Jerome Foundation,
Richard Massey, Judith and Donald Rechler Foundation Inc., and
Eve Sussman. Smack Mellon also receives generous support from
the National Endowment for the Arts, Brooklyn Borough President
Marty Markowitz, City Council Member David Yassky and the New
York City Council, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts, Bloomberg, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., Independence
Community Foundation, Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.,
Lily Auchincloss Foundation Inc., Milton and Sally Avery Arts
Foundation Inc., The New York Community Trust, Robert Sterling
Clark Foundation, Inc., The Starry Night Fund of Tides Foundation,
and The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Inc.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously
provided by the Walentas Family and Two Trees Management.
Public Transportation to Smack Mellon: F train to
York Street, A/C train to High Street, B61 Bus to York and Gold.
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